The Colour of Heaven (13 page)

‘You think you can convince her?’ asked Jacopo.

Salek lit a pipe. ‘Perhaps we have more chance with the boy. She might pity him.’

‘It is I who need the stone most. Let it be me that speaks to her,’ Paolo insisted.

‘First make her show it to us,’ said Jacopo. ‘Then we will know whether it has been worth our effort. It may have no value, and perhaps she lies.’

‘I do not think so,’ Paolo replied. ‘I heard how Yusuf spoke of it.’

Jacopo was surprised by such boldness. ‘Then you will know how hard you must try to persuade her to part with such a stone.’

The next morning, when the men emerged from their tent, they could see that the women were up and working, preparing skins and sewing them with sinew. They were given bread and goat’s milk, and then taken to the main tent to see Aisha once more.

Salek and Jacopo looked at Paolo. He paused, uncertain whether or not to tell Aisha the true nature of his journey. ‘I have a friend,’ he began.

Immediately Aisha interrupted. ‘Man or woman?’

‘A man.’

‘There is no woman?’

‘No.’

She seemed amused. ‘Tell me of this man.’

‘He is a painter in the city of Siena. I hope to take him the stone.’

‘Why does he need it?’

‘To turn it into paint.’

Aisha was shocked. ‘You would destroy it?’

‘No. He would spread it far and wide, as colour across a wall.’

‘And what will your friend paint with this colour?’

‘Eternity,’ Paolo answered. ‘A world without grief.’

‘But has he seen it? How can he know?’

‘He paints to take away the fear of death; to bring the consolation of a greater place beyond our own.’

‘We will live on?’

‘This is the belief of my people, that there is a future for our deepest loves.’

‘I share that hope. But why this stone?’

‘I have heard it is a colour like no other, and that with it we might paint a world like no other.’

‘A noble ambition,’ said Aisha doubtfully.

‘Let us do so. Even if you refuse, even if you will not give it to us or trade at all, I ask you at least to let us see the stone and then depart. Then I can tell my friend that I did all that I could to complete my task. Do not let our journey be in vain.’

‘And why should I trust you?’

‘Because I come in peace and do not travel for myself.’

Aisha smiled sadly. ‘You speak well.’

‘I only speak the truth.’

Aisha said nothing. Paolo could not tell if she had suddenly changed her mind or had lost interest.

Then she spoke. ‘You have come for your friend, and so I will answer in friendship. Make ready. The way is hard.’

An hour later she appeared at their tent, and a small boy stood beside her, holding on to her skirts.

‘This is Jamal,’ she announced.

The boy must have been eight years old, and he appeared both sullen and mistrustful. Salek stepped forward to talk to him, but Aisha interrupted: ‘He does not speak. If you wish to see the mountain, then Paolo must follow him. He will take you.’

‘The entrance is not here, at the mouth of the cave?’

‘No. That is our temple. The stone is hidden. I have warned that it is dangerous but Jamal climbs well. He knows the quickest path.’

Paolo looked up. He could see the steep wall above, then the rock spur below a cornice. To the right stood a snow- and ice-filled gully; to the left avalanche runnels scored the mountain.

Jamal had already begun the ascent. Paolo put his right foot in the lowest crevice, found a hand hold, and began to lever himself up. He had never climbed at such a steep angle. No step was ever certain, no hold secure. All he could do was cleave to the rock, the stone close against his face.

The altitude was such that he could hardly breathe. Paolo imagined falling and his head splitting open below. He could only survive by concentrating on the texture and detail of the mountain, its resolution and its strength: the fine cracks, the strange sheen, unexpected crevices. Looking closely, Paolo noticed that the pattern of the rock mirrored the whorl of his fingers, obscenely enlarged.

He pulled his head back to distance himself from the face, and sensed that he might fall at any moment, backwards, away from the mountain, his life disappearing into the void of winter. What would it mean if his life ended now?

At last he found himself on a high ledge where Jamal made them wait for his mother to join them. Paolo wondered if she had ascended by a different route, one that was far simpler, for when she appeared both she and the women who had accompanied her were perfectly calm. Perhaps the difficult route had been selected only to test his ability and intent?

‘Jamal has brought you safely here,’ said Aisha. ‘Follow me.’

She led them to a small dark entrance in the rock face.

‘I cannot see,’ said Paolo.

‘Our ancestors made a tunnel. We will need fire to travel within it.’

A woman gave Aisha a flaming brand which she passed to Paolo; others followed carrying a supply of firewood which they roped against the wall.

‘The stone is hidden beneath the surface. It is the blue from which the gods moulded us. It is not of this world. We must heat the rock.’

The women felt for crevices and placed wood against the stone. Then they roped sections together as if they were making a series of giant hammocks. A flint was struck repeatedly and the wood began to catch.

The flame flared up, first gold, then blue.

The heat intensified, warming the cave, and then, just as the flames were beginning to die down, the women threw snow against the rock.

The mountain spat back at them as the fire and ice fought for control of its surface, but the women continued as if it were their enemy.

They gestured to Paolo, urging him to continue the fight, miming the way in which he should cut at the rock, pointing to the most vulnerable sections of the surface. One of them handed him a pickaxe.

‘Strike,’ ordered Aisha. ‘It cracks under heat and snow.’

Paolo swung but his pick bounced off the rock, vibrating its energy back into his hand.

‘Harder.’

Paolo thought that the mountain must be as impenetrable as when he had climbed it, but he was now determined to reveal its secret. He began to strike blow after blow as Aisha prised stone out with her fingers, breaking her nails, reaching into each fissure.

Then she picked up a rock and hammered at the sides of the cave, following each crack and crevice: stone against stone.

The lapis fell to the floor.

Aisha bent down, picked out a piece of stone, and handed it to him. It was jagged and cold, but a strange heat emerged from its centre. ‘Take it outside.’

On one side the stone was awkward mountain rock, but on the reverse, the side that had been newly cut, Paolo saw an intense irradiated blue, pitted with gold and streaked with silver.

He had thought that he knew stone, and could no longer be surprised by the way in which gold could be threaded, or silver glisten within. Other men might want to separate the blue from the white, or extract the gold and silver and sell it. They might even discard the blue of the lapis lazuli that he held in his hand.

But now he understood why he had come. Once he had known the richness of sapphire, so translucent that it had almost been white. He had seen the paleness of aquamarine, witnessed the play of pearl in precious opal, and admired the deep-blue gleam in the midst of a piece of firestone. He had once seen a blue so dark as to be black, splintered in tourmaline, disseminated in the darkness of chromite, weathered in the verdigris of caledonite. He had seen it shining as silver in hematite and pyrite, and in galena and in quartz. He had inspected the brittle blue of antimony, and the soft blue of stephanite. He had found a fine blue in the poisonous crystals of cyanite and amidst the white of arsenic. He had seen it in needle-shaped crystals, in druses: granular blues, scaly blues, massive, efflorescent, spathic, and fibrous. He had found blue in rock salt, in quartz, and even in topaz. He had seen pearls that were blue, and had once examined an emerald striated with a strange intrusive rivulet of azure. He knew the heat of blue flame and the cold metallic blue found in the gills of fish or deep in the ice. But he had never seen a colour such as this.

He held the stone in his hand, glowing as if lit by its own light, carved from the sky. All the blue that there had ever been in the world now seemed concentrated in this rock.

He heard Aisha’s voice. ‘People who come tell us that they have never known such beauty,’ she said.

‘They are right,’ said Paolo.

She stood close to him. ‘And we tell them in turn that we have never seen so much death.’

‘Why?’

‘The feathers of the peacock are its enemy. There are some who say that we must take this stone to the ends of the world. Then, when we have journeyed further than any who have travelled before, we must throw it into the darkness that takes all life. Only then will we be free.’

She turned the stone in Paolo’s hands. ‘Look into its veins. What do you see?’

‘Azure. Cobalt. Violet. It changes in the light. Perhaps it is the colour of the night sky.’

‘And can you see between the colours?’

‘Where?’

She took his hand and ran her finger across the stone. ‘Can you not tell that another colour lies here, along this vein?’

Paolo leaned towards her. The stone followed the curve of her hand.

‘Some men cannot see it.’

Paolo could sense her breath in the cold air. ‘What colour do you mean?’

She pointed to a strand of azure. ‘Perhaps you are like my son.’

The boy was watching them.

‘He cannot see into the distance?’ asked Paolo.

‘No. He cannot tell colour: red from green, mulberries from their leaves. Everything is tone and shade; he cannot describe what he sees. Perhaps it is a punishment because I see so clearly.’

‘But he cannot speak?’

‘He can speak. He chooses not to.’

‘How long has he been like this?’

‘Since the day they came.’

Jamal began to pull at her side. It had started to rain. Aisha ushered the boy back into the shelter of the cave.

Paolo looked out from the mountain, down to the river and over to the hills beyond. So, he thought, it is for this that I have travelled.

He tried to imagine the stone as paint, the wash of colour on walls, infinite space.

Then he felt Aisha beside him once more.

‘Look at the light, over there, in the distance through the rain: the arc that hangs in the sky. What are the colours that you see?’

‘A dark blue at the base, a strange green, orange, pale gold.’

‘You do not see the violet next to the blue at the base? Or the colour between the orange and the gold?’

‘It is all one.’

‘You must learn to look between the colours. Can you see the lavender band?’

‘Show me,’ said Paolo.

Aisha pointed. ‘Look. And there, beyond, can you see the fainter and fainter repeats of the main bow, the arch of purple, the strongest green?’

‘I can only see the main arc, vague in the distance,’ Paolo apologised. ‘I see sharply only when objects are near.’

‘Then we are opposite,’ Aisha replied. ‘I prefer distance. The weight of close colour is too strong.’

They stood watching the rainbow. Paolo thought it looked like an upturned bowl of cloud. ‘Will you see your husband again?’ he asked. ‘In another life?’

‘I have learned not to expect such things.’ She looked up and noticed that Paolo was staring at the nape of her neck. The fall of her hair. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

Paolo blushed. ‘I am seventeen. I do not know.’

‘Then you must tell me of your life. It is, I think, your turn.’

That evening, after Paolo had told his companions of the day’s events, Salek seemed almost cheerful. ‘You have spoken well and worked hard, Paolo. Now there is only one thing left for you to do.’

‘Don’t tease him,’ Jacopo interrupted. ‘The boy is still young.’

‘No, no, no,’ Salek insisted. ‘It is time. He is old enough.’

‘For what?’ Paolo asked.

‘You know perfectly well,’ said Salek. ‘It is what you have been waiting for.’

‘Don’t be foolish.’

‘I am not. I know women. I have seen the way she is with you.’

‘She pities me.’

‘No, she does not. You have crossed the world to find what your friend needs most. What might you do for her?’

‘Leave him,’ said Jacopo.

Paolo thought he had only been excited by the stone; now he wondered if all his nervousness on the journey had been but the anticipation of love.

That night he dreamed that he was trapped inside the mountain. He was surrounded by blue, by shadow, and by darkness. He could not see the ground underneath him or the route ahead, and walked with arms outstretched, as if blind, trying to find a tunnel that would lead him back into the light. He could hear voices in the distance, women laughing, and a great gathering sweep of sound as snow slid down from the rocks above. At the same time the uneven floor of the cave began to give way beneath his feet. To move in any direction meant darkness and danger, and yet he knew that he could not keep still, that he would have to search for a way out.